Part 5 (1/2)

The words were his own, spoken that first night about the fire with Kellhus and Serwe beneath Momemn. In a rush, Achamian recalled the sprained wonder of that night, the sense of having discovered something at once horrific and ineluctable. And those eyes, like lucid jewels set in the mud of the world, watching from across the flames-the same eyes that watched him this very moment ... though a different fire now burned between them.

The abomination howled.

”There was a time,” Kellhus continued, ”when you were lost.” His voice seethed with what seemed an inaudible thunder. ”There was a time when you thought to yourself, 'There's no meaning, only love. There's no world ...'”

And Achamian heard himself whisper, ”Only her.”

Esmenet. The Wh.o.r.e of Sumna.

Even now, murder stared from his sockets. He couldn't blink without seeing them together, without glimpsing her eyes wide with bliss, her mouth open, his chest arching back, s.h.i.+ning with her sweat ... He need only speak, Achamian knew, and it would be all over. He need only sing, and the whole world would burn.

”Not I, not even Esmenet, can undo what you suffer, Akka. Your degradation is your own.”

Those grasping grasping eyes! Something within Achamian shrank from them, beseeched him to throw up his arms. eyes! Something within Achamian shrank from them, beseeched him to throw up his arms. He must not see! He must not see!

”What are you saying?” Achamian cried.

Kellhus had become a shadow beneath a tear-splintered sun. At long last he turned to the obscenity writhing across the tree, its face clutching at sun and sky.

”This, Akka ...” There was a blankness to his words, as though he offered them up as parchment, to be rewritten as Achamian wished. ”This is your test.”

”We shall cut you from your meat!” the obscenity howled. the obscenity howled. ”From your meat!” ”From your meat!”

”You, Drusas Achamian, are a Mandate Schoolman.”

After Kellhus left him, Achamian stumbled to one of the ma.s.sive dolmens, leaned against it, and vomited into the gra.s.ses about its base. Then he fled through the blooming trees, past the guards on the portico. He found some kind of pillared vestibule, a vacant niche. Without thinking, he crawled into the shadowy gap between wall and column. He hugged his knees, his shoulders, but he could find no sense of shelter.

Nothing was concealed. Nothing was hidden. They believed me dead! How could they know? They believed me dead! How could they know?

But he's a prophet ... Isn't he?

How could he not not know? How- know? How- Achamian laughed, stared with idiot eyes at the dim geometries painted across the ceiling. He ran a palm over his forehead, fingers through his hair. The skin-spy continued to thrash and bark in his periphery.

”Year One,” he whispered.

CHAPTER TWO.

CARASKAND.

I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.

-HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS

Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Caraskand

Servants and functionaries screamed and scattered as Cnaiur barged past them with his hostage. Alarums had been raised throughout the palace-he could hear them shouting-but none of the fools knew what to do. He had saved their precious Prophet. Did that not make him divine as well? He would have laughed had not his sneer been a thing of iron. If only they knew!

He halted at a juncture in the marmoreal halls, jerked the girl about by the throat. ”Which way?” he snarled.

She sobbed and gasped, looked with wide, panicked eyes down the hallway to their right. He had seized a Kianene slave, knowing she would care more for her skin than her soul. The poison had struck too deep with the Zaudunyani.

Dunyain poison.

”Door!” she cried, gagging. ”There-there!”

Her neck felt good in his hand, like that of a cat or a feeble dog. It reminded him of the days of pilgrimage in his other life, when he had strangled those he raped. Even still, he had no need of her, so he released his grip, watched her stumble backward then topple, skirts askew, across the black floor.

Shouts rang out from the galleries behind them.

He sprinted to the door she'd indicated, kicked it open.

The crib stood in the nursery's centre, carved of wood like black rock, standing as high as his waist, and draped with gauze sheets that hung from a single hook set in the frescoed ceiling. The walls were ochre, the lamp-light dim. The room smelled of sandalwood-there was no hint of soil.

All the world seemed to hush as he circled the ornate cradle. He left no track across the cityscapes woven into the carpet beneath his feet. The lamplights fluttered, but nothing more. With the crib between himself and the entrance, he approached, parted the gauze with his right hand.

Moenghus.

White-skinned. Still young enough to clutch his toes. Eyes at once vacant and lucid, in the way only an infant's could be. The penetrating white-blue of the Steppe.

My son.

Cnaiur reached out two fingers, saw the scars banding the length of his forearm. The babe waved his hands, and as though by accident caught Cnaiur's fingertip, his grip firm like that of a father or friend in miniature. Without warning, his face flushed, became wizened with anguished wrinkles. He sputtered, began wailing.

Why, Cnaiur wondered, would the Dunyain keep this child? What did he see when he looked upon it? What use use was there in a child? was there in a child?

There was no interval between the world and an infant soul. No deception. No language. An infant's wail simply was was its hunger. And it occurred to Cnaiur that if he abandoned this child, it would become an Inrithi, but if he took it, stole away, and rode hard for the Steppe, it would become a Scylvendi. And his hair p.r.i.c.kled across his scalp, for there was magic in that-even doom. its hunger. And it occurred to Cnaiur that if he abandoned this child, it would become an Inrithi, but if he took it, stole away, and rode hard for the Steppe, it would become a Scylvendi. And his hair p.r.i.c.kled across his scalp, for there was magic in that-even doom.

This wail would not always be one with the child's hunger. The interval would lengthen, and the tracks between its soul and its expression would multiply, become more and more unfathomable. This singular need would be unbraided into a thousand strands of l.u.s.t and hope, bound into a thousand knots of fear and shame. And it would wince beneath the upraised hand of the father, sigh at the soft touch of the mother. It would become what circ.u.mstance demanded. Inrithi or Scylvendi ...

It did not matter.

And suddenly, improbably, Cnaiur understood what it was the Dunyain saw: a world world of infant men, their wails beaten into words, into tongues, into nations. Kellhus could see the measure of the interval, he could follow the thousand tracks. And of infant men, their wails beaten into words, into tongues, into nations. Kellhus could see the measure of the interval, he could follow the thousand tracks. And that that was his magic, his sorcery: he could close the interval, answer the wail ... Make souls one with their expression. was his magic, his sorcery: he could close the interval, answer the wail ... Make souls one with their expression.

As his father had before him. Moenghus.